


A Slience So Deep

by ladyroxanne21



Series: Eloped?! [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Draco locks himself in his room, Harry sits in silence with his in laws, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 02:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10799736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyroxanne21/pseuds/ladyroxanne21
Summary: Harry goes to sign the divorce papers, only something unexpected happens.





	A Slience So Deep

 

Draco looked at himself in the mirror, glad that no one was around to see him. He had slept like absolute shite for the past few days and he looked it. He couldn't remember looking so bad since the Final Battle.

With a sigh, he cast glamours on his face until he looked as flawless as he would if he'd just come back from a lazy vacation in a ski resort. Now he looked... rather a lot like his father actually. Pushing that thought away, he wondered how long until Harry showed up to sign the papers.

Since divorce was in essence a legal contract just like any other, all that was necessary was for their lawyers to draw up the terms of the contract and so long as they both signed it, it was valid. The problem most people faced was that they couldn't agree on the terms, which led to lots of nasty fighting in and out of court. Often, the disagreement got to the point where a judge – in the muggle world – or a member of the Wizengamot had to sign off on it, even if one of the spouses didn't want them to. In this case, since Harry had promised to cooperate, all that needed to be done was sign the papers and have them filed.

Draco was cautiously looking forward to his life going back to normal. He'd owl Astoria after Harry left to let her know that they could finally sign that prenuptial agreement and set a date. He was hoping she would agree to a relatively quick timeframe so that they could be married almost as soon as they would have been if this had never happened. After they were married, they'd have the baby that Draco wanted more than anything.

Then, in hopefully less than a year, Draco would be a father. He'd have his precious Heir, but he'd also have that chance to prove to himself that he could keep his promise to be a better father than Lucius. Not that Lucius was the worst father in the world. On the contrary, he loved Draco and would do anything for him, he had simply made a  _long_ string of bad decisions and terrible mistakes that had put their whole family in danger.

Draco fervently vowed to never repeat any of those mistakes. He wasn't so na ï ve as to think he'd never make any mistakes, but he wanted to make brand new ones. Such as indulging his son so much that he turned into an utter geek – or at least he thought that was the muggle word for it. A happy little goofball that didn't care what anyone else thought of him or what he liked.

Yes, this was all for the best. In another ten years, he probably wouldn't even remember most of these last six months with Harry.

Muffy appeared in the room. “Master Harry has arrived, Master Draco sir.”

“I see,” Draco murmured numbly. Part of him had expected Harry to change his mind and not show up after all. Bloody Gryffindors!

A few seconds later, Draco stood up from the cushioned bench in front of his vanity and checked his appearance one last time. Relatively satisfied, he Apparated into the parlor he knew Harry would have been shown to. His parents were making small talk with Harry, who was also being rather gracious and civil.

Draco eyed his father for a moment, wondering if the man was being almost friendly because he knew that it was only a matter of minutes before he never had to see Harry in person again. Deciding that it didn't matter, Draco sat at the table. A house elf promptly served him tea.

“Alright, so, as I understand it, we both sign this and that's it,” Harry stated. He knew he was right because he'd had to have Hermione look over the contract, explain one or two of the terms to him, make a few necessary changes, and then stress that once it was signed, he and Draco would be officially divorced.

“Yes,” Draco confirmed in a voice that was steady and confident, but quiet.

Taking a deep breath, Harry picked up the gorgeous albino peacock feather quill, which nearly made him blush before he firmly pushed that memory out of his mind. Then he signed the document in his messy, well-practiced scrawl. When done, he gently slid the contract and quill over to Draco.

Draco picked up the quill and... froze for a second. Frowning, he  _willed_ his hand to go closer to the dotted line, except his hand shook. In frustration, he set the quill down.

“Draco?” His mother asked in concern.

He shook his head, and then his hand. Picking the quill back up, he tried again. Once more, his hand refused to obey the normally simple command to sign the damn contract.

Once more, he set the quill down. “I can't.”

“Why not?” Lucius asked, his tone mild and his expression genuinely curious.

Draco shook his head and raised his hands so that his arms formed a vague w – a gesture that usually meant, I have no idea why. “I just... can't.”

Harry sat back in his chair a little and studied Draco with a deep frown. “Well, I've kept my promise. You can't hold this against me.”

Draco shook his head to agree that he couldn't.

“So...” Harry continued. “Can I ask _why_ you want this divorce?”

Draco pressed his lips together and stared at the document without seeing it. After a moment of silence, in which he could feel all three of them staring at him, he sighed.

“More than anything, I want a child. My plans are to marry Astoria and have a baby as soon as possible. I can't do that if I don't divorce you,” Draco explained.

“So sign the papers, Draco,” Lucius advised him in a voice that was actually more warm and supportive than Harry thought he was capable of.

Draco tried again, but like the first two times, his hand froze in midair. This time, he slammed the quill down. “I can't!”

“Why not?” Narcissa asked, her voice so full of sympathy that Draco nearly gave into the urge to cry. She covered his hand with hers and gave him a probing but gentle look.

Draco shook his head and looked to the ceiling for guidance. The small cherub painted on the vaulted ceiling waved at him before flying around and pretending to shoot him with arrows, but didn't offer any advice on the matter. A Goddess wearing a crown of hearts that watched over the cherub crossed her arms under her bare chest and tapped her foot impatiently as she stared at Draco. That was no help either!

Narcissa sighed, drawing his attention back to her. “Draco, I think maybe this is obvious to everyone but you at this point. Please think very carefully about what you actually  _want_ .”

“I told you what I want!” Draco protested.

“A child, yes,” Narcissa murmured. “But what else?”

Draco had been well-trained as a child to never fidget and give away his emotions. So, imagine his surprise to find himself tapping on the table with his well-groomed fingers. Harry cleared his throat.

“So wait, are you saying that the _only_ reason you want to divorce me is because you want a baby?”

Draco tilted his head to the side and frowned at that. “Er...” There  _had_ to be more to it than that. He tried to come up with a list. He couldn't. “Yes. I think that actually  _is_ what I'm saying.”

Harry growled in frustration. “Then why didn't you just  _say_ that?!”

“Because _I'm_ not going to carry a child and I highly doubt you want to throw away your career to have one either. Thus, the situation remains; if I want a child –” 

“God you're such a stupid bloody fucking idiot sometimes!” Harry roared.

Draco sat up as straight as possible in indignation. “ _I beg your pardon?!_ ”

“ _Of course_ I would be willing to put my career _on hold_ to have a baby!” Harry half shouted.

“You-wait-what?!” Draco blurted out in astonishment.

“Why would you think I wouldn't?!” Harry questioned, still much louder than necessary.

“Because it doesn't make any sense!” Draco cried out. “And you think _I'm_ being an idiot!”

“That's because you are!”

“Am not!”

“Then explain to me how it doesn't make sense if I want a baby and _you_ want a baby, that I would bloody well have one!” Harry demanded, pushing his right pointer finger into the table firmly.

“Because you are the bloody Deputy Head Auror! You don't have _time_ to have a baby!” Draco pointed out in a tone as if it should be obvious to any idiot.

“Then I'll bloody well make time!”

Draco gaped at Harry incredulously for a moment before he could form words. “You – why?”

“Because I want kids,” Harry explained as if talking to a particularly slow-witted child.

Draco tilted his head to the side and scrutinized Harry as if he was speaking gobbledygook but thought he was making sense.

Narcissa snickered softly. “I think we have just reached a state of agreement.”

“We have?” Draco asked her in disbelief, still not quite able to wrap his head around what Harry was saying.

“Yes,” Narcissa confirmed. “You both want kids and Harry's willing to have them. Problem solved.”

“But...” Draco murmured, faltering because he wasn't quite sure what the rest of his – probably very good – objections were.

Lucius looked like he dearly wanted to shove a hot poker in his eye or swallow broken glass rather than say this, but he steeled himself and gently placed a hand on Draco's shoulder. “Son, it's perfectly acceptable to admit how you feel.”

“Feel?”

“About,” a pained sigh. “Mr. Potter.”

Draco snorted dismissively. “I'm pretty sure everyone knows how I feel about him. How much I want to hex him and punch him in the gut and snog him senseless and make l – uh!” Draco cut himself off with a gasp.

Lucius chuckled softly. “I think you just fairly accurately defined marriage.”

“At least for the first few years,” Narcissa added with a merry smile.

Draco was reeling from shock so much that he was literally swaying woozily in his chair. He abruptly jumped to his feet and nearly fell right back into his chair. “I need my piano!”

The moment after Draco Disapparated, Narcissa turned to Harry. “Please try to forgive us, Harry. We thought it for the best to raise Draco to keep a tight control over his emotions for many reasons – I'm sure you might be able to think of one or two. We never intended for him to deny or suppress his emotions, just stop them from controlling him. We taught him to think carefully and avoid making fatal mistakes. So, of course, that in and of itself was a fatal mistake. I think that Draco truly doesn't know how he feels.”

Harry looked at them for a few seconds each. He had gotten to know Narcissa just well enough to think that she might be supportive if Draco wanted to stay with Harry, but he had honestly thought that Lucius would encourage Draco to sign the papers and be done with the whole mess. He was now shocked by and grudgingly impressed with ... even mentally, it was hard to say. His father in law.

“I just want to know one thing,” Harry finally responded. “Do you know about the things that happened in Draco's room that he refuses to talk about?”

Both parents pressed their lips together in a fairly clear sign that they had an idea at the very least. Narcissa covered his hand with one of hers. Her eyes watered a little but she held the tears back.

“We know something happened and we know it was bad, but he would never tell us either.”

Lucius cleared his throat uncomfortably. “It happened while I was in Azkaban. Before the start of his Sixth Year, as far as I know.”

Nodding in acceptance, Harry got to his feet. “If you'll excuse me.”

“Yes,” Narcissa murmured. “If he has the wards up on his bedroom, your Patronus might be the only thing that can get through to him.”

“Understood,” Harry stated. He tried to Apparate into Draco's room, only to be blocked by the wards, which meant he landed outside the bedroom door. 

He hadn't actually seen the outside before. It was painted in shades of green and blue like ocean waves and had Draco's name on it on fancy silver painted letters. Harry put his hand to the door for a moment, as if feeling for a pulse.

Then he stroked his necklace – the same one that Draco had given him for Christmas. Nodding decisively, Harry pinched the pendant between his fingers and held it to his mouth to activate the ability to talk through it.

“Draco... please let me in.”

There was silence that was suddenly so deep it felt like a buzz in his ear.

He tried again. “Draco... please...”

“Go away,” Draco replied after a pause.

“Please let me in,” Harry repeated.

“Did you know that when I was in Seventh Year, I learned to cast a ward so strong that no one can break it? Not even you.”

Harry was willing to bet he could, but he didn't want to shatter Draco's confidence and trust like that.

“Why are you shutting me out?” Harry asked, trying his best to be patient.

“Because I need to be alone so I can think,” Draco answered, which was more than Harry had hoped for.

“Let me in and I promise I'll be completely silent so I don't disturb you.”

“If you needed to be alone in your invisible shed, would you let me in simply because I wanted you to?” Draco asked.

Harry took a deep breath. “No, I suppose not. I wouldn't want to risk you getting hurt.” There was no reply, so Harry sighed in frustration. “Alright. I'll leave you alone.”

Possibly  _the_ strangest thing of all was that Harry didn't want to be alone, but he also didn't want to call Ron and Hermione away from their jobs, so he stayed in the Manor. However, he didn't just  _stay_ in the Manor, he returned to Lucius and Narcissa. They were both masters of the fine art of letting a person think in silence, so they didn't bother him. Aside from a quick nod from each of them, they didn't even look at Harry. They simply returned their attention to what they were reading – What To Do When You Own Everything for Lucius and a copy of Nude Quidditch Practice Weekly for Narcissa.

Aside from wondering for just one second if he could borrow the magazine from Narcissa when she was done with it, Harry simply sat drinking his tea and looking out the windows at the stunning view of the garden. It was still spring, but Narcissa knew magic that helped her make things grow a month or so earlier than usual, thus everything was in full bloom.

After a while, Harry began to wonder how long he should wait. Maybe it would be for the best to go home and come back tomorrow. Maybe he had to sit back and patiently wait another ten years for Draco to work through all of his issues and be ready to have a real relationship.

Except, that didn't seem to be the case. When Draco wasn't being directly confronted with his feelings, he was actually a very attentive and devoted husband. Especially the last couple of months; he'd seemed to fully embrace living with Harry and being equal partners in their marriage. And it wasn't all just sex either. They'd actually made a habit of reading books – together or separately – and talking about them. Harry was slowly learning more about Draco's interests based off what he liked to read, and vice versa. Their fighting had grown into a combination of the heated bickering that they'd both secretly loved in school, and playful banter that made them both laugh when the argument was over.

The only thing that might be considered unhealthy about their marriage – as far as Harry could reckon in his (admittedly) inexpert opinion – was that  _he_ had carefully held back that little bit of himself; that last little bit of his heart that he needed to hold back and keep safe just in case Draco divorced him after all. Which – it now seemed quite clear – Draco had been planning to do all along.

This thought depressed Harry all over again. “I should go,” he said as he stood up.

What he didn't know was that Draco had been pacing in the hall outside the parlor, trying to work up the nerve to talk to Harry, and Harry's words had jolted him into action. “Wait!” He cried out as he rushed into the room.

Harry had moved toward a sort of caution that he hadn't had earlier. Thus, he remained silent and watched Draco warily. Draco squared his shoulders and tried to seem confident as he walked over to Harry.

When he arrived in front of Harry, Draco took a deep breath. “When we were just 11 years old, I was an arse to you before I even knew who you were. Then when I found out, I tried to befriend you because you were famous and together we could have been the biggest, most influential, names in school. There's probably nothing we couldn't have gotten away with, but you rejected me, and that made me hate you, sneer at you, condescend you, bully you, make all my friends and as many others as I could bully you, plot against you, try to humiliate you, try to get you in as much trouble as possible, and basically just make your life a living hell. Do you know what it  _didn't_ do? It didn't make me stop thinking about you, for a single second, for  _years_ . My first thought each morning was wondering how I was going to humiliate you that day, and my last thought each night was wondering if you were still thinking about me after the times I actually succeeded. And that was  _before_ we got drunk and accidentally eloped! Can you imagine what I thought of  _all_ of Seventh Year?”

Harry was equal parts taken aback and amused by this confession, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Er, that you wished Voldemort would just off himself and save us all the trouble?”

“Aside from that,” Draco stated with a decisive wave of his hand. “I thought about you. I wondered where you were, what you were doing, had you been caught and killed yet without anyone knowing it, and more importantly – to me at the time – what in the buggering hell was I supposed to do with you gone? I didn't have you around to bully, and bullying others just wasn't fun. At all. It was quite a shock to realize that I missed you. Only I couldn't admit that to _anybody_ , not even myself, because if word got out, I probably could have dug my own grave and saved everyone else the trouble. So I told myself that I only thought about you because I wanted to capture you. And bully you. And shag you. And if I could do all three at the same time, I'd feel like the bloody king of the world!

“But then you went and defeated the Dark Lord and changed my whole world, and suddenly I didn't know what to _do_ anymore! It took me _five years_ just to realize that I needed to stop trying to plot against you every morning and find something better to do. So I finally did! I got you out of my mind and made plans to live my own life and have a child so that I could help build a better future for at least one person.

“So of course, you go and insist that we actually be married for six months and change my whole world again! In the space of a day, you ripped all my plans from me and made me feel like you had just tossed me into the ocean without a life preserver! I didn't know what to do! I still don't know what to do! All I know is that after only six short months, I have become so dependant on you that I can't sleep without you! I can't eat, I can't think about anything else, I couldn't even force my hand to write my bloody signature on a piece of stupid paper! What the hell am I supposed to do?!”

Draco stopped to take a breath, and then whipped out his wand and cast an incendio on the divorce papers. “I don't fucking  _want_ to get divorced!”

Harry had been taking purposeful breaths for quite some time now in order to stave off the tears that threatened to well up in his eyes. At this point, he was so overwhelmed by awe and relief and  _love_ that he couldn't stop himself. He threw his arms around Draco and held him tight while he kissed him like Harry was a Dementor and Draco's soul belonged to him. Draco immediately surrendered to the kiss and gave every bit as good as he got.

They had quite forgotten about Lucius and Narcissa by this point. Both parents watched their son in shock and no small amount of awe that he not  _only_ admitted to how he felt, but he  _also_ talked about all his feelings for Harry from literally the first day they met. It not only surprised them, but confirmed something they had begun to suspect recently as they'd had time to think about the past from a new perpective.

When Narcissa recovered from her shock, which was slightly easier because she had never genuinely hated Harry like Lucius had, she let out a tiny giggle and shook her head. “Well, it seems like they've reached an agreement.”

“Yes...” Lucius reluctantly admitted. “I was afraid – er, I _suspected_ things were going to turn out like this, ever since the morning I accidentally walked in on them and had to Obliviate myself.”

This broke through the fog of bliss that had rolled over Draco's brain. “What? You, what?”

“Or I would have Obliviated myself if the risk of losing important memories as well weren't so high,” Lucius clarified.

“No wait, what? You did what?” Draco asked insistently.

Lucius sighed as if severely put upon. “I went into your room one morning to return a book and borrow a new one, only, to my surprise, you were home. And so was he. And that is really all I ever want to think about that again.”

“Merlin and Salazar, just murder me now!” Draco blurted out as he thunked his head on Harry's chest.

“Oh no!” Harry denied fervently. “There's no way in bloody hell I'm going to let you die anytime in the next 75 to 100 years!”

“Sounds like we're going to have a rather long marriage,” Draco remarked drolly.

Harry grinned at him. “Of course we are. I already told you a while ago, I don't actually believe in divorce, so now that you burned the papers, it's 'til death do us part.”

Draco felt a slow smile spread across his lips. “With children.”

“Definitely.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Word vomit, lol :-D


End file.
